Fundamentals
by Ennied
Summary: When Al has trouble mastering an aspect of Alkahestry, he and Mei get back to the basics. Brotherhood & Manga Compliant.
1. Chapter 1

A/n: There is not a lot of AlMei smut on FFnet or Ao3, so I decided to write some. This is two parts because I am incapable of writing PWP and let this spiral out of my control as always. And for those who care to know, this is roughly six years post-canon Brotherhood 'verse.

Many thanks to Izzy (bookofstars), who is both brutal and patient, and thoroughly appreciated.

Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no profit.

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**_Fundamentals_**

x

"_What we don't need to know for achievement, we need to know for our pleasure. Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight."_ – William L. Safire

x

_Part I_

The banquet hall in East City, a grand, high-ceilinged ballroom, was filled with the hum of string instruments and post-dinner conversation. Everything tonight had fallen outside Al's expectations. The party was equal parts administration and civilians, a celebration of the newly-completed railway running from Amestris to Xing. Thus far there were few of the stiff-backed formalities customary at government-run activities. Much to his surprise, the opposite held true. The dress was formal, and the procession even more so, but the atmosphere held little of the anticipated snobbishness. It was much appreciated all around. Fuhrer Grumman had worked hard to make all his guests feel welcome, from the long-time military personnel to the foreign guests and the railway workers who had made it all possible.

Each of the tables had place settings for eight. Al and Mei found their assignment at Ed and Winry's table and introduced themselves to the two other couples, both of whom had worked on railway sections in Ishval. Alim and Fahima had worked in the station proper, building a receiving center for commerce, while Jamila and Naila had consulted on the metal selection out near the border. Though the two new couples were shy at first, after a few glasses of wine they realized that they were in good company and stopped feeling like outsiders to a family reunion.

Al had seen neither his brother nor Winry in far too long and found the occasion more an opportunity to catch up than anything else. Winry looked well, much healthier than when he last saw her six months prior. The birth of their first son had brought an array of complications, but tonight she was back to her usual strength and broad smile. By the time Al and Mei arrived shortly before dinner, Winry had already spotted Lan Fan and dragged her away to squeal over her automail. Ed had rolled his eyes but couldn't conceal his good mood. He had grown another two centimeters since Al returned from Xing and wasn't letting anyone forget it.

The food was good, the company even better. All through dinner the group meandered from topic to topic, starting with Al and Mei's travels across Xing and ending at the railroad-building process.

After the second round of plates had been cleared, both Ishvalan couples left to dance and two of the empty chairs were taken by Ling and Lan Fan, who wasted no time in devouring the remainder of the dessert tray between bites of conversation. Along with Mei, Ling and Lan Fan were the only Xingese in attendance at the current celebration, as a similar party had been held several weeks prior across the desert. It had taken an exhausting amount of planning on Ling's part, and he was accordingly glad to exchange his role tonight for that of 'honored guest'.

Eventually, when they had caught up on everything that had happened since last they met, discussion turned to the present. His speech obscured by the brim of a wine glass, Ed grouched about tax money being spent on extravagant parties. Winry countered that she was glad to see the government thanking its citizens for such hard work. It wasn't often that average people were given dinner and overnight lodging for free.

"You can tell the Brigadier General really cares, too," she said. "He gave such a nice speech."

Ed snorted into his glass. "Yeah, for a last-second job."

"What do you mean?"

"I caught him in the hotel lobby this morning, scribbling it out on the back of a napkin," Ed said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "He told me he didn't get the chance to write it because he was up all night with a stomach bug or something."

A pause, and then Ling muttered, "That sort of exertion would have made me ill, too."

The reaction was so immediate that Al would have missed it, had Mei's elbow not connected with his ribs as her hands flew to her mouth to stifle a giggle. Xiao Mei, who had been perched on Al's shoulder, fell flat on the table at the sudden jolt. Al's head snapped up from dissecting the lemon tart on his plate to find Mei looking amused and a little embarrassed. Her sudden noise was so unexpected that it had caught Ling off guard as well, and laughter made him choke on his mouthful of food. Between the two of them, Lan Fan was looking determinedly not amused, her eyes half-lidded with exasperation.

"Do you want to get them into trouble?" she said in a warning tone. Ling had dislodged the bit of pie from his throat and was coughing. "He and the Captain could lose their jobs if you're not careful."

"No, no, of course not!"

Then Ling hiccupped a second laugh. Lan Fan's mouth quirked up out of its carefully-pressed line and betrayed her.

"They were very subtle, considering," said Mei, who had regained control of herself and returned to stirring her tea. She paused, the spoon midway through a turn, and giggled again. "Lots of practice, I suspect."

More laughter. Al stared, completely nonplussed at the conversation happening before him. He realized his jaw was hanging and closed it. "What are you three talking about?" he said.

"You mean you didn't notice?" said Mei.

Her brows had contracted, almost in concern. Ling and Lan Fan, too, stopped looking amused. Al turned to Ed and Winry with the intention to ask them if they had any idea what they were talking about, but then he saw their baffled expressions and, a moment later, realized that the entire conversation had been in Xingese.

"Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't realize—" he said, switching back to Amestrian.

Often times Al and Mei switched back and forth between their languages, usually based on the topic at hand and sometimes mid-sentence, but Al had never been thrown into a Xingese conversation in Amestris before. The result surprised him. The switch had been completely unconscious, tangling up in his mouth only after he made the conscious effort to switch back. He grinned, pleased by his own proficiency. Mei, too, seemed proud, until she recalled the exchange and became suddenly more somber.

"I forgot, you can't detect remotely," she said, also in Amestrian.

"Not yet," he corrected her. "So is that what you were talking about, with the Briga—? Oh."

Ed butted in from across the table, cutting off Al's delayed revelation. "What exactly can't you do, Al?"

Al shook away his smirk and turned to answer his brother, saying, "I can't differentiate among individual chi patterns. You can tell people apart by reading the energy in their bodies. The flow of chi is unique to the individual. That's how Lan Fan and Fu were always finding Ling, remember?"

"Seems a little… invasive," said Winry.

"It goes even further at the mastery level," added Ling. "Those of us who have been trained in the art of reading the dragon's pulse can not only tell people apart, but can, to some degree, tell about their mental and physical state without even touching them. The more powerful the sensation, the easier it is to read."

Upon spotting Winry looking uncomfortable, Mei added, "Generally etiquette is to ignore anything someone wouldn't want you to know, but sometimes it's impossible."

"And you can't do that?" said Ed.

Al shook his head. "Not without contact. Not yet anyway."

"Maybe that's for the best," Winry muttered into her tea cup.

"I'll get there, I'm sure."

"That's the thing, though," said Ling, pointedly signaling at Al with his fork. "With your training, you should have mastered it by now."

"Well, when did you learn how to do it?"

"When I was six," said Ling, as Lan Fan answered, "Five."

"Then maybe it's like language-learning. The older you are, the harder it becomes to learn something like that," said Al. "How did you learn?"

At this, Ling and Lan Fan exchanged a dark look. Lan Fan sighed, picking idly at the scraps of her dessert.

"Learning to read the dragon's pulse is itself a matter of life and death. If we could not protect our Prince, our clan would perish. So our training was equally dangerous." She set her fork down across the side of her plate and sat upright, leaning back as though the memory had put an ache in her shoulders. "We were blindfolded and brought to a remote part of the woods, and told that unless we made it home blind we could not continue our training. Within a few hours, I was able to tell different types of animals apart, and determine their intentions. You learn quickly when the only other option is death."

In the long pause that followed, Al tried and failed not to notice Mei's hands twisting in her lap. Ed strummed his fingers on the table, and a moment later provided them with a welcome distraction by offering to blindfold Al and kick his ass in the name of education.

x

Sometime after dinner Al looked to his right and realized Mei had slipped off without saying where. He found her on the third floor balcony overlooking the back garden with her elbows propped on the banister and Xiao Mei peering at him from over her shoulder. It was raining tonight as it had rained for three days prior, and with the temperature hovering a touch above freezing the water came down cold for rain but not enough for snow. A chill passed over him as he ducked under the curtain dividing the balcony from the indoors.

"I can't believe that I forgot," she said, a fog rising as she spoke.

"I did too, actually."

Al was not half as concerned with his training as he was with the sad loft in her voice. He crossed to meet her at the edge of the balcony, shifting his view from the streamlike drops of water spilling over the roof's edge. Mei was watching it fall. Someone had strung the balcony with white lights, and the pinpricks reflected back against the off-pouring like glitter. He studied her face, the slight downward projection of her bottom lip, almost like pouting. In the few minutes she was outside, her nose had tinged pink with cold, her cheeks flush and posture rounded. He crossed his arms over the marble banister.

"It's really okay," he said. "We'll get there eventually. Everything else has been going great!"

She propped her chin in one palm without breaking her stare. "That's just it, though. By now you should have no problem with distance chi detection."

"Yeah, but I know for a fact that I can feel the flow of energy through the ground. If I couldn't, I wouldn't be able to transmute remotely. What you're talking about is something similar. It's just a matter of time before I can do it."

"I guess so." Mei blinked once, thinking, before dropping her arms as if unsure what to do with them. Finally she turned to face him, and he was alarmed to see her genuine distress. "But maybe Ling and Lan Fan were right… there are different theories for learning. Maybe if you hadn't stuck with me as your teacher—"

"Hey, come on," said Al, as Mei went back to leaning, frustrated, against the banister. "You need to give yourself a little more credit. I showed up in Xing not knowing anything at all, and you taught me so much about Alkahestry, the language… everything! You're a great teacher."

When she continued to look slightly mollified but still unconvinced, Al scooted closer and touched her hand on the railing. The coolness of her fingers surprised him as she turned her palm up and closed her fingers around his, though it was the only sensible thing to expect in quasi-freezing temperatures. Contact raised in his mind a sudden awareness of her energy, as it always did. Upon first learning to read the dragon's pulse he had found this awareness overwhelming, even distracting—all it would take was an accidental brush and he would jolt as though by a shock, as all this information poured straight through him. Years of practice taught him to temper his focus, though sometimes it still felt more like coping.

Al bent until his forehead bumped against her temple. She shifted at this touch, watching him sidelong, her expression softening.

"Besides, you know that's not the only reason I'm here," he said, and kissed her cheek. "You're stuck with me, Mei Chang."

Mei took her hand away, but she was smiling a crooked little half-grin. She turned again, tilted her head to appraise him, then seemed satisfied enough to pull him into a hug. Neither acknowledged Xiao Mei's displeased yelp as she was squashed between Mei's shoulder and Al's chest. Even in high heeled shoes the top of Mei's head barely grazed the underside of his chin, and as he wrapped his arms around her he thought, as he often did, that she was physically much smaller than she seemed.

"So what now?" Al asked, as Mei pulled back to meet his eyes. He was happy to stay here a little while longer, but if she wanted to move forward he was just as willing.

"Now we figure it out."

The return of her enthusiasm warded off his sense of danger, eased up his shoulders. He was too preoccupied by Mei drawing a path up and down the small of his back to worry much else. "Got any ideas?" he said.

She hummed thoughtfully, tapping a finger to her lips, braids batting against the sides of her face. "There are several ways of going at it that we haven't tried yet."

"You're not going to drop me in the woods, are you?" he said with a nervous laugh.

"No, don't be silly."

Mei took his tie in one hand, instilling him with a chill as she stood on tiptoe as if to kiss him, only to dodge his attempt to reciprocate. Instead she brushed the kiss against the line of his jaw, and again further up toward his neck, keeping the tie just taut enough to stay him.

"Though, you know," she said, her whisper hot on his ear. "There is something to be said for blindfolding."

Al didn't notice his grip on the sides of her dress until he tried to step back and consequently jerked Mei forward. Her surprised gasp turned into a laugh, and once she had recovered from being jostled, she kissed him—properly, this time. Apparently annoyed by these unexpected movements and displays of affection, Xiao Mei hopped down from Mei's shoulder and scurried away to glare at them from afar. The panda's protest went once again unheeded.

For all the chill out on the balcony, Al found himself warming up rather quickly. Mei backed him up against the marble railing and pinned him there with her body, firmly enough so that he could feel the kunai holster fastened to her waist. He didn't break the kiss except to glance over his shoulder at the garden below and verify that they could not be seen from here.

"Careful," he warned, but the caveat was halfhearted at best. Nobody was standing out there in this downpour.

She had her thumbs hooked in his belt loops, her lips on his mouth, his jaw, the pulse point of his neck. Though he had the urge to reach up and pull her long hair out of its artful twist, the vague recollection of a fancy dinner party stopped him. As a trade-off he busied himself with the curve of her hips, hesitating only when she let him go to yank the back of his shirt out of its neat tuck.

"Aren't you supposed to be teaching me som—"

The words came out strangled, and she stifled him with her mouth. One hand slipped beneath the fabric of his dress shirt, then the other. He felt her smile as she drew a palm over the crest of his hip, prompting a sharp inward breath. It wasn't a lesson in remote chi detection, but he was certainly learning _something_. How to stifle his nagging concerns: being spotted, missing the closing ceremony, being spotted missing at the closing ceremony... All the details blurred around the periphery. Mei stuck her fingertips in the front of his waistband, tugging him closer and earning a soft groan in response.

Okay, then. Al had doubted, but now he was trembling and eager. Her purple dress closed like a wrap, with buttons lining the length of the front hem from neck to hip. He reached up and unfastened the topmost button with two fingers, skimmed his thumb across her collar bone. Mei became suddenly very still.

Alarmed as Al had been by Mei suddenly springing at him, he was even more disappointed when she broke the kiss. She hesitated, pulled back, breathing heavily but otherwise motionless, as if listening for some far alarm. Her nails dug into the small of his back and relented. He felt her lashes graze his cheek as she opened her eyes, and then she took a step backward.

"It's your brother," she said with a sigh.

Before Al had a chance to be alarmed, Mei turned on one high heel and started for the balcony's exit, straightening the collar of her dress with Xiao Mei mimicking the gesture right behind her. She reached the marble arch just as Ed wrenched the curtain aside and passed through it. He stutter-stopped to avoid a drink-spilling collision, but she ducked under his outstretched arm without slowing down and with an all too casual, "Hello, Edward."

"Uh, hi."

Ed craned his neck to watch her go, dropping the curtain and turning to his brother once the _click-clack_ of her footfalls disappeared down the corridor. He seemed almost relieved, which Al found exasperating.

"The heck was that?" he said.

Al shook his head dumbly, staring at the place where Mei had gone, half expecting her to reappear. "No idea," he answered, but he had the sense that the two of them were far from done with whatever they had started.

"Well come on, the closing ceremony is about to start."

Al, who had begun straightening his tie as a means of occupying his hands, nodded absently. His brain was still re-routed far away from the dinner party, but he nevertheless managed a short, "Oh, okay."

He sensed that Ed was assessing him, and glanced up to confirm it. Sure enough, Ed's eyebrows had shot up so high that they almost disappeared under his hair.

"What?" said Al.

"Nothing." But Ed was smirking. "Ling told me where to find you."

"Did he?" That piqued Al's interest—surely Ling must have known, the bugger. If Al could detect individuals remotely, he knew that he would likely find Ling's chi clogged up with stifled laughter.

"Yup. And he told me you would want this."

Al had reached the door, and Ed pressed the brimming wine glass into his hands. Some of the fluid sloshed over his fingers, but Al took a long swig without hesitation. "Thanks."

"Anytime. And for the record, I wouldn't have come poking around if Captain Hawkeye hadn't told me to find you before the speeches started. That dress doesn't leave a whole lot to the imagination, but I'm pretty sure she's got at least two guns hidden in there somewhere, so."

"It's fine, I want to be there," said Al, and took another drink.

"Sure you do."

Half of Al's concentration was on calming his pulse down, and the other half was trying to wipe out the sensation of Mei's mouth against his neck. At the moment he had little capacity for small talk, even with Ed. But Ed was not disappointed. On the contrary, he seemed amused. He strode alongside Al with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, whistling, his long ponytail swishing with his steps—all rather annoying, as just a minute ago Ed had looked tremendously relieved to discover both Al and Mei with their clothing still on.

Ed stopped just short of the banquet hall door and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "I'm gonna go rescue Lan Fan before Winry disassembles her arm. I'll meet you inside." When Al nodded his assent, Ed thumped him on the back, leaned in, and said, "You might want to tuck in your shirt, little brother."

_x_

**_TBC_**


	2. Chapter 2

A/n: Part two, and the end! Thanks for reading, and double thanks to those who left a review/kudos/reblog here or on Tumblr. If you would like the username I use for non-smutty fic, just message me!

Thanks again to the marvelous Izilen, my superbeta.

Disclaimer: No profit was made from any part of this fic.

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_Part II_

Despite his disappointment and lingering shock, Al recovered in the few minutes before the closing ceremony. At first he decided that he'd better give Mei some space, but she spotted him right away and motioned for him to join her in conversation with Jamila and Naila. If she was half as ruffled as Al, Mei did an impressive job hiding it; she was her bright and talkative self, falling easily into a back-and-forth about the benefits of using certain alloys for desert railroad tracks. Aside from one passing touch, which may or may not have been accidental, she showed no sign of having nearly gotten laid just minutes before. He hoped that his own mask was equally effective.

At the evening's end, the partygoers funneled out and across the street to the hotel. The air had further chilled since Al was last outside, and a smattering of tiny ice crystals collected on his jacket during the short walk. Once he reached his room on the second story he hung his coat up and brushed the snow off before it could melt. The room was cozy but stuffy, a bare little place with a medium-sized bed and a window overlooking the street below. Al cracked the window halfway to let the air clear out, then took out a book on remote transmutation for the wait. Mei would show up eventually, to whatever end.

Though their relationship was no secret, whoever assigned the rooms for this event must not have thought it prudent for an unmarried couple to share the same bed. Neither of them particularly minded their assignment to two rooms, though it felt silly to live in separate spaces when they shared a bed every night in Xing. Last night when they arrived in East City with Ling, Lan Fan, and several others who had joined the traveling party, Mei had dropped her belongings off in her room and joined him when it became clear that nobody was keeping track.

It had been too late for any sort of fooling around once they were settled, but Al was glad to have her there anyway. He slept much better with her than without. The only one who had anything to complain about was Ed, who for some reason had developed a fear of walking in on his brother having sex. He had burst in this morning while Al was in the shower down the hall to tell him about the free continental breakfast, only to find Mei sleeping there with the covers pulled up around her neck.

A knock on the door pulled Al out of the thought. Closing the book and tucking it under his arm, he crossed to the door and opened it without bothering to look through the peephole.

"Hi," said Mei.

She was still in her dress and shoes. He stepped aside to let her through, and didn't realize that he had been looking for anything until he felt a twinge of confusion. It took another moment, clicking only once he had watched Mei pass by him into the room. He glanced over his shoulder to confirm it.

"Where's Xiao Mei?"

"Sleeping." The echo of her shoes on the floor stopped with her steps. "Wow, it's freezing in here!"

Al chuckled, passing over her comment about the temperature because she said it every time he left the window open. "You're going to have one unhappy panda on your hands when she wakes up and you're not there," he said darkly, easing the door shut with one last sweep of the hall.

"Oh, she'll live," Mei said. "Listen, I've been thinking more on what Lan Fan said about her training. I think we need to backtrack a little."

Admittedly, Alkahestry was not the topmost thing on Al's list of things to do tonight, but it was a competitor for the top three. He was a little surprised that it was the number one thing on _her_ list, given that she had initiated the close call on the balcony, but he wasn't going to press her otherwise. If remote chi detection was what she wanted, he was going to do everything in his power to give it to her.

Her back faced him. He watched her shoulder blades roll together as she stretched and yawned, which didn't much help his cause.

"Sure, if you think we should. You never told me how _you_ learned, by the way."

Mei spun around to face him, taken aback.

"Me? Just lots of practice. My clan didn't have the resources of the Yao clan, but I did have the same urgency. _'Do or die'_," she said, turning the phrase in her native language.

Though they tended to speak the language of whatever country they were in, none of Al's Alkahestry education had been in Amestrian. To facilitate his learning, she continued on with it, giving the whole recap in a few sentences of hasty Xingese.

"The pulse is an energy source. It gives life and power to everything it touches, and it touches everything. That's how Alkahestry works, by providing the energy needed to conduct a transmutation without interfering with the elemental exchange."

"But it's different within life forms, which also have their own energy independent of the dragon's pulse," said Al, taking the book out from under his arm and flipping to the index. "The text says that the flow of the pulse is interrupted as it cycles through living things, because it interacts with the independent energy as well."

Mei nodded. "That's a fair way to put it. Can I see?"

She took two long strides to meet him and held out her hand. Al gave her the book. He'd purchased it at a used bookstore over three years ago and read it so many times that the spine fell open in her palms without prompting. The pages were crisp and flat, but so full of his pen markings that the original text was almost overridden, and Mei had to squint to find the right paragraph among his carefully-inscribed notes. When Mei spotted the right passage, she returned the book to him and jabbed at it with her finger.

"See here? It explains the flow of chi through living things—warm-blooded bodies in particular. The flow carries through the land in a more or less cyclical pattern, like the oceanic jet stream, but as it encounters a body the flow changes."

Al paused, searching for the right word. "So it's… disrupted?"

"No, more like 'altered'. It cycles through the body in different paths, depending on the person. That's how advanced Alkahestrists can tell people apart. We learn to recognize others by the flow of the dragon's pulse through their bodies, as an entity different than the individual's personal energy. There are a few norms, of course. A stagnant flow is never a good sign in anybody."

Al kept on skimming the page. He had re-read its contents enough to recite them by heart, but talking back and forth helped far more than the text. "It must be difficult to isolate individuals in a crowd, though. It's not like knowing someone means you've memorized their chi path, right?"

"With few exceptions, yes. You I could single out in a crowded street, but that's not usually the case." Mei took the book again, closed it, and tossed it on the edge of the bed. "For example, if you asked me who was in the room above us and I didn't already know, I wouldn't be able to tell you. But because I know it's First Lieutenant Havoc, and the energy in his body is at ease, the knowledge that he is standing directly at the window—" she gestured up and back, pinpointing his exact location in space, "—tells me that he's most likely smoking a cigarette."

"That's usually a safe assumption." Al looked up at the ceiling, hoping without expectation that the remote sensory would kick in just because he knew his target. Nothing. Not a surprising result, but a little disappointing. Mei smiled as though she could see him trying.

"If you know someone well enough, you can also learn a lot about the nature of their flow," she said. "A sluggish chi flow doesn't tell you much about someone if you don't know them, but that's how I know when your brother is feeling extra grouchy. On the other hand, it apparently means the opposite for Captain Hawkeye."

"Is that how you and the others knew about her and Brigadier General Mustang?" Al asked.

"Uh huh. Well, actually, I didn't know for sure until I picked up on his pathway too." At this, Mei snickered. "His energy was much higher than normal, and their proximity was a dead giveaway."

"So what's the secret? If I'm not going to learn out of necessity, how else can I do it?"

Mei looked curiously at Al, and after a moments' pause she shuffled forward until she had closed the gap to mere centimeters. She bit her lip and pulled his tie loose with two short tugs before tossing it away. "We're going to take what you do know and extrapolate from it. Close your eyes."

Al obeyed, although privately he thought he'd rather be watching as Mei unfastened all the buttons of his waistcoat. Next she went for the ones on his shirt, starting at the top and stalling after the fourth. A few seconds passed where nothing happened, and then he startled as she made contact with his skin. She spread the fingers of one hand over the center of his chest. Sure enough it was there, that strange and extraordinary sensation like pulses mingling.

He heard her intake of breath, a fraction's pause, and slow exhale. "Do you feel it?"

"Yes," he said.

It amazed him that this flow came so easily, Mei channeling her energy through his body with even the lightest touches. There was still something astounding about it, even after years of practice. Trying to read your own chi was a bit like looking in the mirror; Al found that his perception of himself was flawed, almost warped by the very fact of self-awareness. His perception of Mei, too, was different than for other people. He had learned to know her pulse like he knew all her other features—her beliefs, her mind, her body—but the connection brought about a change in the both of them. He looked internally and his reflection was different, somehow.

Over time he had accepted it as an oddity and habituated. Now, though, with his focus solely on her energy, it felt a bit like the first time.

"Give me your hand," she said.

Gently, she took his wrist and guided it to her chest, mirroring her own position by setting his palm over the center of her chest. He was pleased to find that the shift in her chi flow was not just in his head; her heart, too, thrummed along at an alarming rate.

Al fought the urge to open his eyes. "What should I be doing?"

"This," she said, "is a re-introduction to thinking with your senses."

"Doesn't sight count as a sense?" he teased, and winced as she flicked his collar bone.

"In this case it's more of a distraction… You need to focus, okay? I'm going to ease up, but try to hang on to it. We'll see how far you get."

Al shifted his stance as though this could help, cleared his throat, and nodded. "Go ahead. I've got you."

"Good." Mei's fingers slipped across his chest to his shoulder, then down his arm until she had clasped both hands around his wrist.

Al had anticipated that his detection would fade out with their contact, but though it diminished it did not disappear. She backed away, bit by bit, lifting his hand from her chest and pressing it between her palms. His jaw tightened with the effort of hanging on, and when she finally let go, he could have sworn that he still felt it, swimming hazily through his mind's eye—that is, until he realized that he was holding his breath.

The realization prompted him to inhale, and the sense of her energy vanished as he lost his concentration. He opened his eyes to prevent a fall and, dizzy, made a half-turn and sat down on the edge of the bed.

Less than a second later Mei was leaning over him, eyes round with alarm. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I—" Al faltered mid-way through dismissing her concern as the realization struck. "Mei, we did it!"

"We did?"

"Yes! I think."

"Alphonse, that's _great!_"

Mei threw her arms around him and he swayed, staying himself with one arm while the other grabbed her around the waist. When she leaned back to grin at him he caught her in a kiss. A surprised little gasp parted her lips, but she overcame it quickly, shifting her weight to rest one knee on either side of his legs. Al sat upright and thumbed along the hem of her dress.

"It's like I said. You're a great teacher," he murmured against her mouth.

"The key is patience," she replied, settling on his knees so his eye level hovered around the nape of her neck. The front clasps of her dress still hung loose, and it was with some effort that he raised his eyes to meet hers. Mei sighed. "Although I think we may have made a mistake with your training."

The comment effectively stalled his hands on their journey up the back of her dress. She was already working on the last of his shirt buttons, and he arched a brow when she did not offer any explanation.

"And?"

"And I think we ought to work on the fundamentals a little more before we move forward. You know—" Mei raised her arms and pointed a finger at both of her temples. "Thinking with your senses."

"Ah. Fundamentals. I see."

With two fingers Al folded back her collar and pressed his lips to the base of her throat. He felt her breath tangle up, caught as if by surprise. The almost delicate sound spurred him forward and he followed the path down between her breasts, kissing the soft places down the line of her sternum while his fingers worked on the buttons of her gown. There seemed to be a hundred or so and he couldn't release them fast enough. In a fluid motion she pulled his shirt and vest off his shoulders. He stopped what he was doing to finish removing it.

Mei felt the goosebumps rise on his skin and said, "Told you it was chilly in here."

"I like the cold."

Al cupped the back of her neck and guided her down to kiss him again.

"You like the cold, you like the heat, you like it all," said Mei, punctuating each phrase with a kiss to his forehead, his brow, his nose.

"Everything is good," he said.

"Mmm, everything _is_ good."

She had a fistful of his hair, her grip tightening against the base of his scalp as he opened his mouth and met her tongue. It was a soft kiss, deliberate, just testing, but it was enough to elicit a quiet moan from Mei. The sound rattled him, a tremor sliding down his throat and into his belly. He gathered up a handful of her dress in either hand and slipped it off of her shoulders, but before he could go for the hook of her bra he felt her shift backward and begin to stand. She eased down on the balls of her feet. The skinny heels of her shoes hit the floor with a sharp _click_.

Mei straightened up and the dress fell down around her in a ring of purple silk, followed immediately by the sound of a piece of chalk rolling away across the floor. Tucking an escaped strand of hair behind her ear, she propped her hands on her waist and fixed him with an appraising look.

"Not 'disrupted', but 'altered'. Does that make sense?" she said, echoing their previous conversation as she loosed her holster. She set it on the bedside table in exchange for his wallet, from which she procured a condom packet. The wallet went back to the table, the condom to the bed.

For the second time, Al thought he might still have a grasp on the flow of energy through their bodies. The loss of contact had weakened it, but despite the several centimeters between them she stayed with him, almost like an afterimage in his mind. It was difficult to say, with her standing there in underwear and strappy shoes, whether he was confusing the connection with regular excitement. When it came to Mei, the symptoms sometimes blurred.

"I think so. But is it really so obvious? The change, I mean."

He tracked her path across the room, where she hit the light switch before returning to him. The bulb overhead went out, but the lamp post outside the window cast the room in a pale white glow. Within a few seconds his eyes had adjusted to the light, enough to watch her bend and loosen his belt.

"It depends on the person and the perceiver. You could say that you and I don't keep secrets very well," she said casually, unzipping his fly. "Ling and Lan Fan are right below us. I'm sure they've noticed by now."

Before he had time to feel embarrassed about the possibility of having his arousal noticed by anybody outside the room, Mei was tugging at the fabric of his pants. Removing the rest of his clothing was a much less graceful process than it had been for Mei. It was only with a mutual effort that they got his trousers down around his knees, and when they did his boxer shorts came right with them.

"Seems a little weird," said Al, as he kicked off both items of clothing. His kunai holster, still affixed to his belt, sounded louder than usual as it hit the floor.

"It's like I told Winry at dinner. It's etiquette to tune it out, and even if you didn't, it's not like you would know anything specific. From a distance it's just like an awareness." Mei shrugged. "No weirder than hearing it through the walls."

Though he did think it awkward to overhear someone else's affairs, he kept the comment to himself. Al had leaned forward and caught her around the backs of her knees, and when he tugged her toward him she let out a quiet laugh. He kissed her just below her navel and said in a mock whisper, "Then I guess there's no need to keep quiet."

At this point the main reason that he was able to pay attention to the lesson, rather than setting it briefly aside for sex, was that the two were inextricably mixed. The pulse coursed up his arms at the touch of her skin, sparked like an impulse jumping a synapse as he skimmed the backs of his fingers up the inside of her thigh.

If Mei had thought up any response to his quip, her words failed her, instead coming out as a strangled exhale through her teeth. Al tipped his chin up to watch her eyelids flutter shut as he brushed his thumb between her legs, satisfied both by her response and the dampness blotting through the fabric. A blush had risen on her cheeks in spite of her previously collected demeanor, her body going rigid. His fingers traced a back-and-forth path, and whether guided by her own volition or by his motion, her hips rose to follow him, until he eased his hand away and pulled her underpants down her legs.

Mei did not wait for him to follow up, instead nudging his legs together and kneeling on the edge of the bed. She tore the little square packet open and fished the condom out with two fingers. Al was so wound up that when she took him up in one hand, he jerked hard enough to make the mattress spring creak. She had to grab his shoulder to steady herself, but she laughed.

"Careful, or you'll knock me off the bed," she warned, scooting closer to line her body up over his. "Are you all right?"

Al was trembling. As if her touch alone were not enough, as if the hours of waiting were not sufficiently long to make him ache with need, the short lesson had him acutely aware of her body's energy. He took a shallow breath as she rolled the condom down. "Y-yeah, sorry."

His hands settled around her hips. She adjusted her grip on his arousal and his nails bit down to keep from jostling her a second time. They were so close that he could feel her heat, could see the fine dots of sweat that had risen on her hairline despite the cold. One of her shoes fell clattering to the floor and she pushed the other off in a similar fashion, utterly unconcerned about attracting the attention of those in the room below. As she had said, there was a good chance that they already knew. No sense in needless caution.

Mei bowed to kiss him, and as he met her halfway Al reached between her shoulder blades and somehow one-handedly popped the hook of her bra out of its clasp. She smirked against his mouth, pulled the bra off, and tossed it aside.

"Finally," she breathed.

Al had to agree. Slipping two fingers down her center, he edged into her just slightly, just enough to draw a gasp, and withdrew to distribute her wetness. She started easing down on him before he was quite finished, bent legs spreading to straddle his lap, but the shock of initial entrance gave way quickly. Mei took her time, the both of them enjoying every inch and their mutual groan when she finally took his full length.

They went together. Mei braced her arms against him when he leaned forward, pressing into her as he dipped her back, and back, and back. The pace was hers. She moved deliberately, sinuous and slow, timing each motion with the roll of her hips.

With the fingers of one hand splayed over the groove of her spine, Al kissed a line from her jaw to sternum. Her pulse leapt beneath his lips, just below the surface of her throat, and he hung there to soak it in before moving down across her chest. But though she gasped at his hand slipping over her breast, she did not moan until she felt his tongue there. The sound was low and long and deep, a breath cracked wide open. Encouraged by her audible reply, he drew small circles around her nipple until it hardened, then pressed it between his tongue and his teeth. Like all touches between them, he was gentle but firm, earning from Mei a shiver that was more sizzle than spark.

Mei began to say something, but again he lightly bit down and she gave up, lost for words with her eyes tight shut and one nipple teased between his teeth. Her back arched, nails digging momentarily into his sides. She tightened around him and this time it was Al who jolted, releasing her to clasp both hands behind the small of her back and straighten them up again. They overshot, teetered, and finally Al fell backward across the mattress.

With a laugh, Mei bent to kiss him and the soft strands of hair that had escaped her barrette skimmed over his chest. She was bearing down on him in long, even strokes, withdrawing almost completely before sliding back down over his shaft, sending frission after frission of pleasure straight through his gut.

The heat was rising like the pulse in his temples. Al sought her with his fingers and groaned to find her so wet. Often times using a condom necessitated additional lubricant, but not tonight. Tonight she was so hot and so slick that he rubbed quick circles over her clit without the fear of friction, a pulse thrumming faintly below his thumb. Mei tweaked his wrist a touch to the left and rocked against him in response.

"Al—?"

She was almost panting, yet beneath the broken sound of his name Al heard the question and knew the answer. Withdrawing his hand, he pulled her close before rolling them to one side. It took a few seconds of awkward shuffling before they got all the way onto the bed, and even after he flipped her onto her back and steadied himself, her feet still hung off the edge of the mattress. This she remedied by hitching her ankles around his waist, one arm slung over his shoulder while the other slipped down between them.

"Ready?" he said, all out of breath.

Her answer was to lift her head enough to kiss him. Their tongues met, lingered, he whimpered into her mouth. Already her fingers were moving fast against her clit, and as he picked up a rhythm he at once felt her begin to tremble. Mei fell back against the bed. A drop of sweat rolled down the side of his face. Her chest heaved with the effort of inhaling, heels searching for purchase at the small of his back and digging in with every push. Al realized that he was making faint sounds, combined into meaningless syllables from their two languages, and bit his lip to stop himself.

"More—" she said faintly, and gasped as he pressed all the way into her, hard.

Al knew that she was coming perhaps even before she did, before her legs tightened around his waist or her arm pulled him down. It was the shift in the flow of her energy, a side effect of sharing bodies like this, so subtle that he would have missed it had he not learned to read every nuance like a map. There it was—a twinge, and he couldn't explain it but he knew it—and within moments her voice had risen in her breath, sharp staccato in his ear. Every muscle in her body went taut and then shuddered.

And just as he had known, Mei sensed his peak before he arrived and threw him into it headlong, thrusting against him at the perfect moment. He cracked, he spilled open, burying his mouth against the mattress to stifle the sound of his climax. Mei wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him as he came.

x

On his way back from the toilet, Al stopped at Mei's bedroom and let himself in with her room key. Midnight had long since passed, with nobody to question Al for padding shirtless down the corridor with a panda perched atop his head. Xiao Mei had at first been unhappy to see him, turning her back to him when he poked his head through the door as though to punish him for such reckless abandonment. But when he slipped back into his own room and Xiao Mei spotted the figure in his bed, the long hour and a half was instantly forgotten. She hopped down the length of his arm, over the mattress, and snuggled right up on Mei's pillow.

Mei shifted at the faint squeaking sound, lifting a hand to acknowledge Xiao Mei's presence with a soft touch, but quickly lapsed back into sleep. She was turned away from him on her side, and for a few minutes Al watched her shoulder rise and fall with even breath. Outside the ice had melted back to rain. He could hear the drops as they panged against the cracked window and the second-story walls. Before long it had his eyelids drooping.

Al locked the door to prevent an uncomfortable repetition of yesterday's performance, crawled back into bed, and lay atop the covers. Mei was naked still, the sheet she'd tucked under her arms falling down around the middle of her waist. Carefully Al leaned in, studied the long curve of her spine. He thought that maybe he could feel her now across the short space between them. If he was right, then the flow of the land's chi ran up through her limbs before pooling between her lungs. A slow and easy tempo, soft, characteristic of Mei completely at peace.

Hesitating only a moment before he moved, Al lifted one hand and pressed his palm between her shoulder blades. There it was. Her body was warm, no longer damp with sweat but dry and smooth. Mei stirred at his touch, ribcage stretching beneath his hand as she yawned.

"Everything all right?" she mumbled, voice heavy with sleep.

Al settled down behind her, tucking one arm across her chest, and she brushed a kiss over his knuckles. He nestled into the back of her neck.

"Everything," he said, and smiled against her skin.

x

The lobby buzzed with activity the next morning as the banquet attendees gathered before catching the first trains out of the city. Ling sat with his elbows propped on his knees, rubbing the ache out of his temples while Lan Fan lurked behind him and looked suspiciously about the room. There was a heavy sigh just to his left, and when he glanced up he saw that Ed had flopped down in the adjacent seat.

"Hey, have you seen Al or Mei? We're supposed to be taking the same train to Resembool."

Without hesitation, Ling looked up from the space between his shoes and pointed to the line at the checkout counter, from where Al had been determinedly avoiding his gaze for the last ten minutes. He and Mei had each a travel cup filled with something steamy and probably also very strong.

Ed 'hmm'-ed and slouched back in the padded chair, which made his meditative expression look even grumpier than usual. "He looks wiped," he said needlessly. "I hope he wasn't too worked up about what you said yesterday and didn't get any sleep."

From behind the seat, Lan Fan gave a scoff that went almost unheard in the bustle of the room, but which translated roughly to '_how inconsiderate_'. Then, as if on cue, Mei turned and caught Ling's eye. He shook his head at her. She smirked.

"I wouldn't be too concerned," Ling said.

x

**_End._**


End file.
